There is a pressing need in many industries for a solution to the problem of handling contaminated industrial fluids. Industries generally solve their contaminated fluids problems by merely disposing of the fluids after only one use of the fluid. However, in the face of increasing governmental regulations with respect to the disposal of such industrial fluids, and in view of the great expense involved in replacing fluid after only one use, a different solution to the problem is needed.
Attempts have been made to recover the valuable industrial coolant fluid contained within a contaminated mixture for continued reuse. Prior art recovery systems, however, have not fully answered the needs of industry. Single pass methods involving elaborate equipment set ups which are manually controlled and monitored are known in the art but for various reasons are not feasible for use throughout the various industries. Other prior art recovery systems are so designed that they cannot tolerate solids and for that reason are unsuitable for several industries. Oftentimes separate solids filtering devices are added to such recovery systems, but that involves further expense and maintenance problems. Also skimming devices or skimmers for removing the free and mechanically emulsified oils from the contaminated mixture have been commonly used, but they have not always been reliable or efficient as required by the industries. A still further problem with recovery systems of the prior art is the stagnation of recovered fluid which has been stored for lengths of time such as two to three days. Stagnation occurs when the fluid is not periodically aerated, as bacteria and fungus growth is promoted under such conditions and the recovered coolant fluid is then unsuitable for reuse. And finally, these prior art systems have required extensive manual operation for their functions and as such, people must be trained and equipment carefully watched and maintained in order to achieve the objectives of the recovery system.
The present invention is believed to solve the problems of the prior art recovery systems with its unique design and its multi-phase operating modes. The system is fully automated and requires only one or two people to operate the complete invention.